Ford Foundation Launches International Fellowships Program
Largest Single Grant in Its History
New York, N.Y., Nov. 29, 2000— The Ford Foundation today announced a major international graduate fellowships program and a complementary undergraduate initiative to help prepare a new generation of future leaders for the challenges of the 21st century.
The $330 million commitment features a new Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP) that will provide $280 million over the next 10 years to support post-baccalaureate study for Fellows from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Russia. The IFP, which will award 350 new graduate fellowships annually, assisting a total of 3,500 Fellows over the next decade, represents the largest single grant in the Ford Foundation's history. An additional $50 million will support programs that seek to broaden opportunities for undergraduate education in these regions.
"Societies around the world face the challenges of globalization, advancing technology, peace and security, and the widening gap between rich and poor," said Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation. "To tackle these challenges successfully we need people from all sectors of society who can bring fresh vision, expert knowledge and strong leadership skills. In many countries, however, the rapidly increasing need for advanced education far exceeds available resources, which is why we feel this is the right moment to commit to a large-scale fellowships program."
The graduate fellowships will support up to three years of master's or doctoral study at universities anywhere in the world. Fellows will be selected on the basis of their leadership potential, academic excellence and commitment to community or national development. They may pursue their studies in any fields that further the Ford Foundation's goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement.
"We have an extraordinary opportunity at this point in history to foster freedom, democracy, human rights and overall better lives for millions of people around the world. The Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program will play a major role in training new leaders," said U.S. Senator Richard G. Lugar (R-IN), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the author of a federal program to train new Russian CPA's and MBA's at American universities.
The International Fellowships Program aims to broaden the talent pool of future leaders by making a special effort to recruit exceptional individuals who would otherwise lack opportunities for advanced study. This will include women, people who belong to particular ethnic, racial or religious groups, and those who live outside capital cities or in countries in conflict or post-conflict situations.
"The Second Summit of the Americas, in 1998, recognized education as ‘the determining factor for the political, social, cultural, and economic development of our peoples,'" said Francisco Rojas Aravena, director of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Chile. "In Latin America, the Ford Foundation's International Fellowships Program will make a decisive contribution to achieving these goals and to the consolidation of democracy."
The program builds on the Ford Foundation's longtime commitment to providing educational opportunities to talented people around the world. Since the 1950s Ford has granted an estimated $365 million to enable some 30,000 individuals from more than 70 countries to pursue graduate education. Over the years, Ford fellowship recipients have helped advance knowledge in the social sciences, the humanities and the arts. Many former Ford Fellows have become leaders in their countries' governments and in major institutions around the world.
The new commitment of $330 million represents a special appropriation above the Ford Foundation's annual level of grant making. Last year the foundation made some 2,000 grants totaling close to $700 million.
"In making this commitment to international higher education, we can draw on our 50 years of experience working overseas as well as the recent growth of our assets resulting from the strong U.S economy," said Ms. Berresford. "We thought it would be good to share our new wealth with people in developing countries and particularly those from disadvantaged communities."
The International Fellowships Program will begin in Vietnam, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, Chile, Peru, and Russia. During 2001-2002 the program will expand to other countries and regions, including South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, China, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, North Africa, the Middle East and Central America. United States citizens are not eligible, but Fellows may study at U.S. universities.
The program will be managed by national, regional and international organizations working in close collaboration with a Secretariat based at the Ford Foundation's headquarters in New York. These organizations will convene panels of scholars, practitioners, and other experts to assess applications and make the final selection. For the first phase of the program, these "partner" organizations are: the Association of African Universities (West Africa), the Center for Educational Exchange with Vietnam/American Council of Learned Societies (Vietnam), the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Chile and Peru) and the Moscow office of the Institute of International Education (Russia). The Institute of International Education in New York will provide centralized monitoring services for the program.
The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has worked with courageous people on the frontlines of social change worldwide, guided by its mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.